Happy National Gorilla Suit Day

Even though the holiday is now freakin' commercialized and jag offs like Bill O'Reilly make it sound like people care if you say "Happy" or "Merry" or "Shut it, you," I want you to have a Happy National Gorilla Suit Day.

Disney-Pixar reactions from inside Disney

Alright, here's where it might matter most: the animators from inside Disney speak about the Disney-Pixar deal. The wonderful Cartoon Brew has lots of links/interviews. My favorites include "This is like seeing the orcs being driven out of Middle Earth. I am overjoyed," and "An animator in charge of Feature animation? Am I dreaming? Is Walt smiling right now? An artist, who has made short films, and feature films, studied figure drawing, can draw and animate, used an Oxberry camera, went to Cal Arts, and loves the medium to death..."

C'mon, this could be really good, right? Right?

10...er, 9-6 Favorite TV Shows

You got a taste with #10, now here come da judge:

#9 Late Night with David Letterman - In early 1990 the Groah home acquired a satellite dish and multiple channels. A few years later the then-fledgling 'E' channel acquired re-broadcast rights to the first few years of the Late Night library. I was hooked instantly.

I planned my homework around being able to watch Letterman, both on E and on NBC. I had insomnia anyway, and Letterman made it something I embraced. I got to watch the first few years worth of shows in a really compressed amount of time and see the day-to-day evolution of the show. Even now, at it's heart, it's a comedy show with interviews, but then it was even more so. And funny. And ballsy. And inventive. And every minute of it was overseen by one cranky and sardonic hoosier.

#8 Arrested Development - No show in years makes me laugh as consitently and longly (longly? really?) as Arrested Development. The comedy runs the gamut of mean spirited, smart, dumb, puns, crude, vile, satiric, juvenile, and cheap. In a Friends world it's easy to see why this show never got huge ratings.

And the cast. Holy crap. You anchor that show with one or two of the leads, but this show has, what, an ensemble of 9? If/when it goes away, I'll miss it.

# 7 The West Wing (first four seasons) - I made the mistake of watching the season one season finale and then obsessed over the reruns up til the new season. I've typed lots about The West Wing recently, and I don't know what different I can say. There's a reason it won Peabodys, and that was humor, drama, and style. Most of the time The West Wing could've easily won Emmys in the comedy category as easily as it won for drama.

Public servants should want to aspire to greatness. This show made it look easy. Or really hard.

#6 Mystery Science Theater 3000 - If I'm occasionally funny, it's due to MST3K. A guy and two puppet robots watch bad movies and talk back to them. The show was like a joke every 10 seconds.

Bryan always summed it up the best way: "It's taking bad art and making it into good art." There were no life lessons, no hugging, just the funny. You could bet that you wouldn't get all the jokes in a show either, just more of the appeal. Years later I'd rewatch episodes and get more than before. Humor that grows with you.

Sadly, the broadcast rights are just sitting now. A show as timeless as MST3K should always be on, right next to Seinfeld, Cheers, Taxi, and M.A.S.H. Except with, you know, puppets.

That's 9-6. 5-1 to come. You guys know what you haven't seen here, so you know what's coming. Oh, I should mentioned The Ben Stiller Show on the earlier list. Lapse in memory yet green, but slightly moldy.

Top 10 preview OR Waiting for Mr. Good Render

Alright, I'm working on something vacuous and without any real meaning, unless you count your insight into my dull and pedestrian psyche: my Top 10 Favorite TV Shows. MY favorites.

In no particular order, here are the shows that did not make the cut:

- Charlie Rose
- Magnum P.I.
- The Daily Show (with and without Jon Stewart)
- M.A.S.H.
- Veronica Mars
- Cheers
- Curb Your Enthusiasm
- Lost
- Late Night with Conan O'Brien
- The Twilight Zone (this was barely edged out. Barely)
- 24
- Scrubs
- Gilmore Girls
- Wonderfalls
- 3, 2, 1 Contact
- NOVA
- Batman: The Animated Series
- Firefly (while it was on TV, it was not a favorite. On DVD it's up there, but I'm judging purely on viewing habits while broadcast)

So that's what didn't make it. I may have left some stuff off, but that's what I got. Tune in for the Top 10... soon.






Alright, here's #10: Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. I caught a few epsiodes of the abridged first season, caught the re-runs, started season 2 and was in love with the series (you thought I was going to say "Sarah Michelle Gellar" didn't you?).

Take high school, describe the experience as being on a literal mouth to Hell. C'mon! Make it funny, sad, smart, against the grain, and evolving? Kill off main characters? Take chances and fail?

Buffy took cliche and turned it into gold. Witty, adult, often moving, always Emmy-denied, I love Buffy.

Okay, that was #10, you know this is going to get bloody as we get to #1. Bryan knows what it is... that would be telling...

Um, "Wow" again, but different

If you've ever wanted to bittorrent video and audio but were afraid of the process, this is the app FireAnt. I just tried it on some audio files and it's freaking great.

If it lives up to the video hype (copy video and audio directly to an iPod, PSP, Creative Zen, and other devices) I'm a happy happy boy. I've only fooled around with it for a few minutes, but I dig the crap out of FireAnt.

And like all things in life, this information flows from the Great TWIT himself.

WOW!! Let the blogging begin!!!!

The unofficial "I *heart* Susan Bahorich" Week continues! With Susan! Blogging!

And believe me, she's lying. Her ideal job involves beer and watching The Simpsons. If I didn't already live with a reporter who pays half the rent and walks the dogs, Susan would be my reporter de jour.

Next to hunky Ted Koppel.

But Susan, you LIKE TV

Very cool news for two very nice and talented guys, Ultra gets a CBS pilot:

"According to Variety, the Luna brothers debut Image series, Ultra has been greenlighted for a pilot on CBS.

The miniseries (which gained the brothers attention from Brian Bendis and Marvel, leading to their current penciling gig on Spider-Woman: Origin) starred the workaholic super heroine, Ultra, and blurred the line between superheroes and celebrity. As such, the miniseries’ covers spoofed magazine covers, showing Ultra and her fellow heroes.

The pilot is being headed up by Barbara (Joan of Arcadia) Hill, who will executive produce, with David Engle and David Alpert as co-executive producers.

Presumably, if the pilot does well in its time slot and among its projected audience (not to mention if it has star power backing it), CBS will consider Ultra for an ongoing series."

I met the Lunas a few years ago in Baltimore and they're as nice as they are talented. I have a story about them giving me too much change on purpose, and for starving artists that's a lot. Even with the Joan of Arcadia lady I'm hoping it kicks butt.

S-T-E-V-E-Y J-O-B-S-EEEEEEEEE

I might have to like Disney again.

Damn it

Out of all the 80's TV-into-movies nostalgia, the show I figured out how to make into a movie was Magnum P.I. Now somebody else beat me to it.

I don't think he's the right director. I mean, I've made zero movies, but I'm pretty sure it's me...

Soderbergh! The Musical!

Steven Soderbergh is a damn fine director, and I'm curious to see how the multi-release delivery system he and the HDNET boys are developing plays out. I first heard about this a year ago, and it's interesting to see the Hollywood reaction then (lots of teeth gnashing) and now (lots more teeth gnashing but he's got Ocean's 13 coming down the pipe).

Read an interview here on Suicide Girls, the creepiest website with the best interviews.

I don't even know you any more

I've been thinking a lot lately about this whole online-journal-thing. My intent was to have a place to chart my running progress so I'd be responsible for updating something. I'm still sort of working my way up to running, and it's still sort of painful, but it's coming.

But the whole "read about me!" aspect of "blogging" is a turn off. I try to treat this space as a way to update folks I know (and I'm pretty sure I know or at least someone real knows) everybody reading this. I'd certainly prefer to see/talk to you in person or on the phone, but that ain't always feasible. So you get this, sort of updates, sort of ramblings. And I try to make it all the truth.

The artifice is the thing I guess I'm mulling. So often in our culture it feels like we communitcate less with more stuff to communicate with. I could get to know you, but I want you to know what I had for breakfast. It feels so good to tell you!

Web logs are a great way to advertise you, another thing I like about the freedom of the web and the $8.88 domain name registration expense. Warren Ellis uses the web to generate a sense of community and to sell himself. The Engine and Warren Ellis dot com and his Bad Signal daily e-mail list are all tools he uses to sell his upcoming and current work and to brand Warren Ellis. The weird part, after being on Bad Signal for a year plus, is you feel like you get to know him.

Reading the work and the thoughts and the ramblings, I feel like I "know" this guy who lives in Northern England. We've never talked, we've never communicated, but he e-mails me more than most of you do. It's odd.

And yesterday I, about 8000 others, got this from Warren:

"I know some of you have been
wondering why I haven't been in
touch much, and I know a lot of my
offices keep tabs on this list to
see if I'm working. So hopefully I'll
catch all of you with this email and
not have to mess around with a
bunch of others.

My mother died this afternoon
after a decade-long fight with
cancer. She was 59. I was there
when she went. We knew last week
that this was it, and she went
peacefully, in her sleep, at the
hospital.

Damn right I'm in the pub.

Unlikely to be around much over
the next few days.

-- W"

That's what was in my e-mail box from a guy I've never met. He doesn't do that, it's never e-mails about "I stubbed my toe" and "I really like vanilla" it's usually about movies and TV and music and how to make books and comics better and how all the women who run The Engine are crazy. But yesterday, the very real, the very final, the very much a person e-mail came in.

And I felt sorry for his loss.

What I'm getting at is this: I'd much rather have gotten to know him in the pub. It'd be better to meet people that way. It'd be better to not play voice mail tag. This crappy typed thing doesn't make up for me taking your money at the poker table, but it helps, I guess.

Warren sent this out this morning by the way:

"bs
me

To add insult to injury, this morning
the end of a spring popped out of
the bed's mattress and stabbed me
right in the willy.

Smile, damnit. We're all still here.
Like I always say: every day above
ground is a bonus.

-- W"

Ain't that the truth.

The West Wing is dead

Well, I'm not sorry.

Long live The West Wing.

Great, now I hate dogs AND Diane Lane

I do not know Diane Lane, but I want to like Diane Lane. Really.

Because I enjoy pain, last night I rented Must Love Dogs. If you know anything about me, you should know that my love of all things John Cusack knows no bounds (alright, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil isn't anything I've ever wanted to see). Lloyd Dobler is the spiritual template which all teenage boys should subscribe. Lane Meyer makes you realize you should learn french. Hoops McCann likes comics AND was bad at basketball. And Martin Blank is the perfect metaphor for a twenty-somethings moral and faith-based crisis. With guns.

I can watch just about anything Cusack and enjoy his performance (re: Con Air, That Crappy Movie at the Hotel with All the Converging Stories) and I barely made it through Must Love Dogs. What an awful awful movie. I share it with you here to help you avoid the same fate.

Cusack is Cusack. He's funny just because he's John Cusack, but that ain't enough for an hour plus of crap movie.

Seriously, the big third act romantic climax is one of the most poorly shot, poorly acted scenes I can remember. And it's John Cusack, a dog, and a women's crew team. That's an easy mark for off-kilter comedy and sweet sweet lovin'. Unless you're the jackass in charge of Must Love Dogs.

Diane Lane is just around the corner from being likeable. I don't know if it's her or the bad direction. She seems perfectly servicable as a romantic lead, really. Boy did I want to like her. I like romatic comedies. You don't have to convice me to watch them.

You just have to convice me they're good.

Alright, I'm gonna go get The Constant Gardner. Even though there's no Walter Gibson in sight it seems like a sure thing.

In a world

Movie trailer men make with the funny. I saw this last summer and forgot about it. I'm a movie dork and I love this clip.

All I wanted to do was make Susan happy(er)

I thought her name in lights would be good enough:

"IMAGINE how PLEASED I was to read the new headline of your blog...
hhhhhhmmmm, I thought- he might be onto something. a space I ALREADY
enjoyed, might become even MORE enjoyable. WOW!!!"

.... And then, BAM, SPLAT, BOOM!!!!! WHAT DO I READ????? SOMETHING ABOUT
SOMEBODY AND HIS COMIC- sigh!"

Expect more of the same. You buy me a PowerBook I'll update daily. Daily. And not about comics. It'll be about being sleepy and not running.

Planetary #24

My favorite comic is about to end. Writer Warren Ellis and artist John Cassaday have deconstructed, oh, I don't know, a dozen and half or so genres/mediums over the course of 24 serialized comics stories. It's a sweeping narrative about the last century and this century meeting and the people who run/create the world. A global conspiracy powered by four individuals called the Four(an analog to comic's The Fantastic Four, the comic that changed, for good or for evil, the way comics were presented and to the demo that read(s) them) who want to withhold the knowledge and technology that could make the planet better. Our protagonist, Elijah Snow, just figured out his one purpose: to save people.

Really, Planetary is sui generis. Everything you could want all rolled into one neat, original package. That's where Ellis excels: takes the worn out concept and looks at it with fresh eyes. But the real strenghs here are ideas bursting out of every panel, original dialouge, stunning "direction" by artist John Cassaday, and really, I don't know how else to say it, people you hope are real. I want there to be someone out there who loves how odd and strange the world really is, and does their level best to keep it that way. I want a guy who's devoted his oddly long life to catalouging the mysteries of the world. You know

I will be so happy when this story is over (comics need to end) and yet I'm sure there's not going to be a comic like it ever again. Print on paper has never looked so good. Kicks the shit out of any entertainment I've consumed in the past 12 months. Period.

Elijah is hell bent on stopping the Four. It's counting down til your favorite show is gone, it's the last act of Charlie Kane's life. You're starting the last chapter of your favorie prose novel. The Beatles are releasing one last album. I'm afraid he won't make it out alive.

I'm terrified on how this will end...

The game's afoot indeed.

Digico redux

Amy and Miriam gave up their MLK day off to redecorate Digico. Some of you know: we work out of a house. It's cheap rent, it's big, and we don't have a lot of foot traffic. However, we have more client meetings happening here now, so we wanted the place to be more presentable.

There's about a 99% chance we're moving in the next few months to one of three locations, so not spending a lot of time/money on decorating was a concern, as was stuff that would work in a different environment. With a very small budget and about 12 hours Miriam and Amy made the house look respectable. The shots are of the waiting area and bathroom. Light prevented me from showing off some of the other locations, but I'll work on that.

Arrested series finale?

Yeah it was coming:

"While the end for "Malcolm" and "That '70s Show" comes after long, successful runs, the untimely exit of the network's Emmy-winning but low-rated comedy "Arrested Development" after three seasons -- two of them abbreviated -- brought up a lot of questions.

Although the network touts airing the two-hour block of the final four episodes of "Arrested's" current order on February 10 as "season finale," Liguori stressed that a future return of the show to Fox is "highly unlikely.'"

TV Barn had a bit about ABC and Showtime negotiating for Arrested which makes me happy. Not that I have Showtime...

Joyed again

Alright, one more. This is doing the cover an injustice as the actual cover wraps around to the back cover and it's one huuuuggggggeeee design. I still like just half of it though.

I didn't upload the back shot of the topless gal with the tattoo... figured that'd hot water at home and with that plucky Jen...

Joyed

I'm the worst kind of guy who does what I do: my graphic design skills suck, but I can edit the hell out of work by other people. To put it another way: I criticize thousands of movies, have made zero. Yup, I'm that guy.

Really, how is this not the best thing ever?


It's a cover and I love it. I've made zero covers today.

Seriously, the cover just speaks to me. I probably get excited because of how much of a fan I am of the series already, but it's such a strong, kinetic look that I want to get off my butt and get my samurai sword for my rocking adventure...

Ten bucks, Ed

I'll expand on this later, but I love Ed. And I want to love Love Monkey so I'll be tuning in ton... well, when ever, I have Tivo. It's on tonight at 10 p.m. on your local CBS station.

Ed is one of my favorite shows of all time, probably in my Top 5, as a matter of fact. I'll throw up my Top Ten later today.

Here's hoping it's good.

I know that I shall meet my fate somewhere among the clouds above

This was sad to read. I did not realize Geoffry Morley-Mower had left us.

Our second paying gig as Digico was shooting interview footage for a documentary version of Morley-Mower's book Messerschmitt Roulette. Mr. Morley-Mower was gracious, kind with his time, animated and incredibly interesting. At the time he was a very young 85.

Reading his bio, it's a life a lot of young boys dream of: adventure, wit, a bit of dash, great literature, and romance. In fact, it's something young boys rapidly approaching 30 dream of regularly.

It was a great pleasure to spend some time with him and listen to stories about a war waged in the sky.

You know you're going to.

Stop acting like it's the early 80's and come over

Brimley was right

Since I've been doing the sick, I've started eating more Quaker Oats oatmeal. Oatmeal was not ever offered growing up, either at home or at friend's. I have to say, I'm loving oatmeal. I know, I know, but really, I'm digging the crap out of it.

Slow news day, for sure. Working, checking in to see what Uncle Steve announces about these damn Intel Powerbooks. I'm guessing we're getting them today. Should find out in minutes.


UPDATED

Oh Kevin Rose, what don't you know?

Illin' = low postage, but not if you're the U.S. Government

I'm in like Day 5 of the War on Cold. I think I'm on the downside of the no-talk spiral. I sound like Barry White, which is quite awesome. I'm ending every sentence with "nuff of yo love, babe."

Regular lameness to resume soon.

A radio station that you like? Free? Pfah!

The ever-awesome Leo Laporte and Amber Mac have pointed me to Pandora. It's a "radio station" that you program with what you want. It's kinda like ordering a book on Amazon and having similar bands come up after the first band/song is selected. Pandora doesn't use collaborative filtering like Amazon, so it's not just the mainstream/popular bands.

Neat, free, and Leo and Amber told me about it. Best free shows on the web.

Calling all entries

I am fat and lazy. The past two quarters have been so busy I'm talking about them as quarters and not "the past six months." I've made very little for myself, in terms of "cool stuff."

Therefore, with it being a new year and all, and slightly slower this week, I'm issuing a challenge: give me a vague one-sentence storyline and I'll make a :60 short. It can't be something real specific like "You stalk John Madden and teach him to punt" or real involved like "Find a tow truck that's blue and drive it to Stuckeyville and show them how it's done down South." I'm talking vague like "The World's Saddest Clown" or "Why no one drinks milk."

Something random and short. I'll print out the ideas and choose one at random. And I'll post a link to the deal and you can bask in all my taking your good idea and making it mediocre as I ran out of time and determination, just like "Hollywood."

New hotness in '06

GoDigico.com/ has a neat new look thanks to one Jeremy Forehand. Spelling errors courtesy of me.

Go order a TV show and a website right now!